In its 53rd year, the Baltimore Choral Arts Society presents A Season of Story and Song. In this new expanded season, Choral Arts provides a five-concert series that emphasizes powerful stories, new community collaborations, and premieres paired with well-known choral repertoire. In his second year as Music Director, Anthony Blake Clark states “I am thrilled to share our storytelling with you this coming season as we navigate our way through some of the best tales by some of the best composers in the world. There are pieces that are very close to my heart and there are new things that will be provocative for our Baltimore audience. This season, collaboration and education will be at the very core of what we do.”
The opening concert of the season, Brahms: A German Requiem, focuses on Brahms’ “London Version” (piano four-hand) of his Requiem, leading from loss and despair to comfort and peace. This concert features Michael Sheppard and Leo Wanenchak on piano four-hands. This concert includes the premiere Music Director Anthony Blake Clark’s new composition, Heroicus.
In December, holiday choral favorites will return to the historic Baltimore Basilica with Christmas with Choral Arts. This year, Baltimore Choral Arts will feature 13 symphonic brass instrumentalist, percussion, and organ to tell the festive story of the Christmas season. Choral Arts brings even more holiday cheer with highlights of Handel’s great oratorio in Sing-Along Messiah, and a new Christmas story told by Pepito the Clown in Christmas for Kids.
In February, Baltimore Choral Arts presents a new concert in its now-expanded subscription series with Little Match Girl in collaboration with the Maryland Institute College of Art. Performing David Lang’s the little match girl passion with other choral works imbedded between each movement, the concert will have congruent images displayed in Falvey Hall, created by students of MICA. This concert with a capella Chamber Chorus will be performed without intermission.
The closing concert of the season is Captivity to Liberty, which tells the ancient story of the Minotaur with a U.S. premiere of Jonathan Dove’s The Monster and the Maze. Also included is Mendelssohn’s Die erste Walpurgisnact, which describes victory for religious freedom with a text setting of Goethe. The performance is packed with collaborators, showcasing Choral Arts with The Larks of the Junior League of Baltimore, The Maryland State Boys Choir, and Johns Hopkins Peabody Preparatory Orchestra, and more.
The Baltimore Choral Arts Society is one of Maryland's premier cultural institutions. The Symphonic Chorus, Full Chorus, and Chamber Chorus perform throughout the mid-Atlantic region, as well as in Washington, D.C., New York, and in Europe. For the past 22 years, WMAR Television, the ABC network affiliate in Maryland, has featured Baltimore Choral Arts Society in an hour-long special, Christmas with Choral Arts, which won an Emmy Award in 2006. The ensemble has been featured frequently on The First Art (Public Radio International), Performance Today (National Public Radio) and VOX (XM Radio). In Europe, Choral Arts was featured in a program devoted to the music of Handel broadcast on Radio Suisse Romande.
Conductor and composer Anthony Blake Clark is in his second season as Music Director of Baltimore Choral Arts Society. In addition to Choral Arts, he is also Director of Choral Activities in The George Washington University’s Corcoran School of Art and Design in downtown DC, where he conducts the University Singers and the GWU Chamber Singers. Clark has led ensembles in the United States and Europe, and his compositions have been heard across the country as well as in the UK, and the Czech Republic. He has prepared choruses for Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Simon Halsey, Gijs Leenaars, and Julian Wilkins, for performances with prestigious ensembles including the Berlin Philharmonic and the Berlin Radio Choir. Recently, Clark was the Assistant Chorus Master for the Berlin Philharmonic’s performance of Stravinsky’s “Oedipus Rex” under the baton of Sir John Eliot Gardiner.
PICK2 or More subscription option and single tickets are available now. For more information, please visit www.BaltimoreChoralArts.org or call the box office at 410-523-7070.
